Amazon Gift Signals Confidence in Community Colleges — from insidehighered.com by Suzanne Smalley
The company is giving $3 million to kick-start a computer science bachelor’s degree program at community and technical colleges throughout Washington State.

Excerpt:

Amazon is funding a pilot that will support the launch of new computer science bachelor’s degree programs at community and technical colleges in Seattle and across Washington State, an investment meant to address a workforce shortage plaguing the e-commerce giant and other employers who can’t find qualified candidates for unfilled computer science positions.

 

This wild new display puts a gargantuan 120-inch virtual monitor on your desk — from digitaltrends.com by Drew Prindle

It’s impressive to behold, and honestly a bit difficult to describe. The best comparison I can muster is that it feels like sitting in front of a huge VR headset designed for a giant, but rather than wearing it, you’re peering into the display from a short distance away. The concave screen fills your field of vision much like a large, curved gaming monitor might, but doesn’t block out the outside world entirely as most VR headsets do.

 

Why Samsung built an NFT aggregator into its new TVs — from digitaltrends.com by Phil Nickinson

Excerpt:

Or, perhaps, it’s the idea of an “NFT aggregation platform” being built into the television. It sounds insane — baking something that most people don’t understand, let alone engage in — into a TV. Most of us can’t even describe what a non-fungible token is, let alone tell someone how to go get one. It’s a multi-layered process that’s far more difficult than taking a screenshot of something you saw on Instagram and then sticking it up on your TV.

But that’s also not the point.

“In 2022, Samsung is introducing the world’s first TV screen-based NFT explorer and marketplace aggregator,” reads the press release, “a groundbreaking platform that lets you browse, purchase, and display your favorite art — all in one place.”

 

Successful competency-based learning in a California school system — from tonybates.ca by Tony Bates

Excerpt:

In my search for relevant material for the k-12 sector for the third edition of Teaching in a Digital Age, I came across this very good report on the use of competency-based learning in a California school system. I have condensed the article somewhat so please read the original article for more detail.

 

5 Ways Teachers Can Help Students in Their Online Learning Journey — from edtechreview.in

Excerpt:

With the growing prominence of online education and its integration into the daily lives of students, teachers can play an active role in helping students in their online learning journey. Here’s how:

 

The Samsung Freestyle Projector

Samsung just made the TV disappear — from protocol.com by Janko Roettgers
Samsung’s Freestyle projector is a smart TV. And not a TV at all. And a smart speaker. And … a lamp?

Excerpt:

Samsung’s TV R&D team seemingly never runs out of ideas: After giving the world a TV the size of a wall, a TV that looked like a giant phone and a TV that doubles as art, at this year’s CES, the company debuted a TV that’s capable of turning anything and everything into a screen.

The new Samsung Freestyle is a portable projector capable of projecting video from 30 inches to 100 inches. It offers access to the very same UI and apps as any of the company’s other 2022 smart TVs, but that’s pretty much where the similarities to a traditional TV end.

 

This is a Screen — And It Could be the Biggest Product Launch at CES 2022 — from interestingengineering.com by Grant Currin
Samsung is letting users re-imagine what their spaces can be.

Excerpt:

The new hyperflexible, hyperportable, hypercustomizable, hyperpersonalizable projector is all about what it can be for the individual user. Unconstrained by cables or presets, the Freestyle is marketed as an anything-you-want-it-to-be machine. Samsung says it will ship in the next few months.

 

Samsung Electronics Launches The Freestyle, a Portable Screen for Entertainment Wherever You Are — from news.samsung.com

  • First-of-its-kind technology delivers optimal viewing and entertainment in a compact form factor
  • Features auto-level, auto-focus and auto-keystone capabilities for perfect picture every time

The Samsung Freestyle Projector

 

 

Discover the Winners of the Natural Landscape Photography Awards — from fubiz.net

Numerous bolts of lightning appear immediately behind a massive, jagged mountain top

 

Panthera pardus kotiya — from 500px.com by Petr Kolb

 

In our hands – Directors: Dorian&Daniel from Dorian & Daniel on Vimeo.

 

Lauterbrunnen — from 500px.com by Michael Chlebek

 

Surveying the animation boom and its effects on the creative industry — from itsnicethat.com by Dalia Dawood and Alex Moy
“We’re seeing animation go into spaces that it’s not been in before” – leading studios shed light on a transforming industry and what it means for our screens.

Excerpt:

While kids’ animation remains popular – India-based children’s studio Toonz saw increased demand not only for feature films but “edutainment”, especially “social and emotional learning, an area kids missed out on when schools were shut,” says CEO P. Jayakumar – adult long-form animation has flourished. Such shows have evolved beyond slapstick humour to meet contemporary audiences’ interests, exploring serious issues such as mental health.

 

skihopp Gopro — youtube.com

 

The use of Gimbals to get stabilized images when recording digital video.

The use of Gimbals can give you stabilized images when you are recording digital video.

Here is an excerpt from Wikipedia:

Photography and imaging
Gimbals are also used to mount everything from small camera lenses to large photographic telescopes.

In portable photography equipment, single-axis gimbal heads are used in order to allow a balanced movement for camera and lenses. This proves useful in wildlife photography as well as in any other case where very long and heavy telephoto lenses are adopted: a gimbal head rotates a lens around its center of gravity, thus allowing for easy and smooth manipulation while tracking moving subjects.

Very large gimbal mounts in the form 2 or 3 axis altitude-altitude mounts are used in satellite photography for tracking purposes.

Gyrostabilized gimbals which house multiple sensors are also used for airborne surveillance applications including airborne law enforcement, pipe and power line inspection, mapping, and ISR (intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance). Sensors include thermal imaging, daylight, low light cameras as well as laser range finder, and illuminators.

Gimbal systems are also used in scientific optics equipment. For example, they are used to rotate a material sample along an axis to study their angular dependence of optical properties.

 

Why the Science of Teaching Is Often Ignored — from chronicle.com by Beth McMurtrie
There’s a whole literature on what works. But it’s not making its way into the classroom.

Excerpts:

Yet, teaching reformers argue, the dangers of ignoring the expanding body of knowledge about teaching and learning are ever more apparent. Traditional teaching may have sufficed when college campuses were more ivory tower than lifeboat, educating future generations of scholars and other elites rather than trying to lift up a diverse group of students and prepare them for an increasingly complex world.

Studies have also shown that faculty members are more likely to try evidence-based teaching practices if they feel they have supportive colleagues and departments. Faculty learning communities can be particularly helpful, teaching experts say, because instructors meet regularly over a series of months to tackle complex challenges, often by exploring the research and experimenting with small changes to their teaching.

Reforming teaching evaluations so that they reflect the hard work of reading and reflecting on teaching scholarship is also a critical lever for change.

 

Make your knowledge workers love learning through storytelling, personalization, and immersive learning

Instructional strategies to make your knowledge workers love learning — from blog.commlabindia.com

Excerpt:

As a training manager, you need to step up your game to cater to the corporate training needs of these thinkers. Functional and creative instructional strategies should be used to engage learners and offer sticky learning, in the classroom and online. The strategies need to involve learners emotionally, offer an experiential set up, and appeal to their creative side.

 

Nvidia expands its GeForce Now game streaming ecosystem — from techcrunch.com by Frederic Lardinois

Excerpt:

At CES, Nvidia today put a strong emphasis on its GeForce Now game streaming service, its competitor to the likes of Google’s Stadia (that’s still around, right?), Amazon’s Luna and Microsoft’s increasingly popular Xbox Cloud Gaming service. All of these use a different business model, with GeForce Now making it easy for players to bring games they bought elsewhere to the service, with Nvidia offering a restricted free tier and then charging a membership fee for access to its servers, starting…

Nvidia launches the $249 GeForce RTX 3050 — from techcrunch.com by Frederic Lardinois

Excerpt:

You can now add another set of Nvidia-based graphics cards to the graphics cards you probably won’t be able to buy anytime soon, as the company today launched the GeForce RTX 3050 for desktops. Starting at $249, the budget-friendly card — assuming Nvidia and its partners can produce enough to keep prices from escalating — will feature 8GB of GDDR6 memory and promises to be able to run the latest games at over 60 frames in a 1440p resolution with ray-tracing enabled. Like its more powerful …

Nvidia expands its Omniverse — from techcrunch.com by Frederic Lardinois

Excerpt:

Omniverse is Nvidia’s platform for allowing creators, designers and engineers to collaboratively build virtual worlds. Until now, Omniverse and the various Nvidia tools that support it were in beta, but at CES today, the company took off the beta label and made Omniverse generally available to creators. The company says Omniverse has already been downloaded by almost 100,000 creators and with today’s update, it is bringing a number of new features to the platform, too.

Nvidia embraces the metaverse with new software, marketplace deals — from reuters.com by Stephen Nellis

Excerpt:

Jan 3 (Reuters) – Nvidia Corp (NVDA.O) on Tuesday said that it would give away software for free to artists and other creators building virtual worlds for the metaverse and that it has made technology deals with several marketplaces where artists sell the three-dimensional content they create.

 

More students question college, putting counselors in a fresh quandary — from hechingerreport.org by Laura Pappano
The pandemic has made counselors reflect on how to help students evaluate many different paths and opportunities, then figure out what interests them

Excerpt:

Many high schools, said Anderson, “like to promote the fact that 100 percent or 95 percent are college-bound.” Such data points are not barometers of success, she argues, because they are more about “sending students off to the next institution” than helping them work through individual needs, skills and desires.

Are people ready to rethink what “success” looks like? And how to help students achieve it?

For teens across the country — many of them burnt out, confused or newly questioning long-held plans — that conversation is coming alive. It is unfolding amid scrutiny of the cost and value of a college degree and the multiplying options for alternative training.

 

 

Frequently Asked Questions About Metaverse — from 101blockchains.com by Georgia Weston

You can also discover many other interesting use cases of the metaverse, such as creating virtual learning spaces or virtual tourism. 

 

Also see:

Top 5 Blockchain And Crypto Projects In The Metaverse — from 101blockchains.com by Georgia Weston

 

Long disparaged, education for the skilled trades is slowly coming into fashion — from hechingerreport.org by Jon Marcus
Higher demand, better pay and new respect are drawing students to the trades

Excerpt:

Meanwhile, Americans can see firsthand the labor shortages in fields such as construction, transportation and logistics, along with rising pay for those kinds of jobs and the lower debt and the shorter timetables needed to train for them.

“Especially with the younger generation, time matters. Money matters, but time matters as well,” said Chad Wilson, superintendent at the East Valley Institute of Technology in Arizona, or EVIT.

 

Global EdTech Venture Capital Report – Full Year 2021 — from holoniq.com
$20.8B of EdTech Venture Capital Investment in 2021 through more than 1,500 Funding Rounds.

Excerpt:

EdTech Venture Capital reached 3x pre-pandemic investment levels in 2021, accelerating startups around the world with over $20B of funding. Fueled by a massive US and EU investment surge and India’s growth charging onwards, collectively global growth covered an $8B investment collapse from China and managed to set record growth for the sector.

 

From DSC:
Below are some items that offer potential future scenarios, predictions, trends, forecasts. and upcoming lawsuits for 2022. These resources provide some interesting fodder for reflection.


10 Forecasts For The Near Future Of Tech & Life As We Know It — from digest.scottbelsky.com by Scott Belsky

The next generation of top talent will have “Polygamous Careers,” transforming the corporate world as we know it. The traditional job market, tax forms, college, and healthcare are all geared for an old world that fails to engage our modern brains…

The rise of immersive experiences will mainstream 3D creation. All this metaverse hype will fall completely flat unless such experiences are filled with rich, engaging, 3D, interactive, and personalized content. 3D content creation will become 100x more accessible.

Here’s our cheat sheet for 2022’s tech lawsuits — from protocol.com by Ben Brody
Your guide to a bunch of the Google antitrust cases, where the FTC is with Facebook, what could happen next with Sec. 230 and more.

How fifth graders see the world in 20 years — from hechingerreport.org by Lillian Mongeau, Christina Samuels, Kathryn Palmer, and Chelsea Sheasley
Flying cars, houses on Mars — and hopefully no more Covid or racism

7 higher education trends to watch in 2022 — from highereddive.com by Jeremy Bauer-Wolf
Politics bleeding into college operations, new regulatory action, continued expansion of online ed and more are stories we’ll be following in 2022.

Can ed tech providers build on their momentum?
The last two years have been a massive boon to MOOC platforms. The number of people registered on Coursera, one of the most well-known MOOC providers, swelled to around 92 million in September, up from 77 million in 2020 and 46 million the prior year. Likewise, demand for competitor Udemy surged during the pandemic.

6 Essential educational trends to look out for in 2022 — from blog.neolms.com by Andreea Mihaly

5 gaming trends to watch in 2022 — from protocol.com

What comes next for enterprise tech in 2022 — from protocol.com

After a period of great disruption and rapid modernization, 2022 will be a year during which enterprise companies take a breath and a closer look at the software and cloud services they snapped up like holiday season COVID-19 tests over the last two years. The products and trends that survive that scrutiny will set the priorities for the rest of the decade.

The tech IPOs to watch in 2022 — from protocol.com by Biz Carson and Michelle Ma
Some have filed. Some have hired the right people. And some are just on investors’ wishlists.

The bigger-picture view of the industry is that gaming is on the precipice of major shake-ups to its core business and distribution models, as well as shifts many years in the making around game monetization and developer work culture.

Bitcoin could reach $100,000—and other predictions for 2022 — from fortune.com by Joanna Ossinger

“The race is on to be the app store for crypto,” said Philip Gradwell, chief economist at Chainalysis, in an email. “A major lesson of Web 2.0 was that consumers love platforms, and I don’t think that is going to change for Web 3.0. Currently there is no crypto platform that owns the customer relationship and aggregates suppliers. I predict that in 2022, many companies will race to build this platform…”

AWS will buy a SaaS company, and other 2022 enterprise predictions — from techcrunch.com by Ron Miller

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Addendum on 1/7/22:

 
© 2025 | Daniel Christian